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Monthly Archives: July 2008

Rogers, a huge cable internet provider in Canada, has decided to hijack all unregistered domains, and replace them with Yahoo! advertisements. This means Rogers users who type in a domain that doesn’t exist, are now getting Yahoo ads instead of the normal “not found” error.

Interestingly, Rogers also decided to do this with subdomains. So for example, example.google.com now takes you to the following advertising:

Larry Lessig points out that for the first time in history Congress’
job performance is rated (by Rasmussen)
in single digits: 9%.
Some of his commenters think that has something to do with the
recent FISA bill, and others think that’s just a minority concern.

Three quarters of the American people and even a majority of Republicans
oppose Bush’s warrantless wiretaps.
Two thirds oppose warrantless wiretaps even for communications between U.S. citizens and overseas persons, and almost 2/3
oppose immunity for telcos.
Aome people call that a minority.
I don’t think that word means what they think it means.

Instead of standing up to Bush as the Constitution requires, Congress capitulated
and gave the worst president in history still more powers to spy on the people.
And the people do know about it:

Martin stands up for "principles"

Martin broke the news Thursday evening by way of the Associated Press, telling them that "the Commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers' access to the Internet. We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."

The decision could be an historic one, but not for its actual effect on Comcast. The cable company has already announced plans to transition away from the current throttling regime to something that looks more at overall bandwidth use rather than particular applications. Trials in Pennsylvania are currently underway on the new system, set to be deployed by year’s end. Martin’s order would therefore not require the company to do anything new, but it would have to provide more detail about past and future practices.

Yes, I know, the FISA bill just passed by the Senate doesn’t
preclude criminal liability.
But Bush can, by pardoning for any and all crimes committed,
just like Ford did for Nixon; the man who commuted Scooter Libby’s
sentence won’t balk at that.
And the bill does do away with civil liability,
so the telcos never have to pay for illegal warrantless blanket wiretapping,
and the criminal evidence against the politicians that hired it is hidden.

But, to be Chicago kind of candid, whatcha gonna do about it?

Today, the freshman senator from Illinois voted in favor of the FISA bill that provides retroactive legal protection to cooperating telecom companies that helped the feds eavesdrop on overseas calls. Up until a few weeks ago — let’s see, that would be shortly after the last primaries settled the Democratic nomination and terminated what’s-her-name’s once frontrunning campaign — Obama adamantly opposed the bill. “Unequivocally” was the word his people used.

…without the presence of multiple providers of goods in the economy,
the single dominant firm is in the same position as a socialist central
planner. In the real world, BNL would have no market price signals to help
it discern consumer demand for and the relative scarcity of resources. It
would not be able to engage in rational economic calculation and would
make decisions arbitrarily. Surely, this state would not please many
consumers, and the BNL monopoly would be short lived at most.

On the Fourth of July, who wants to legalize their government spying
on them, their children, their parents, and their neighbors, without
even a warrant?
Listening to every phone call; reading every text message,
IM, email, and facebook poke; watching every video you post or view?
This is what we expect from Hugo Chavez, from Fidel Castro, or from
the old Soviet Union.
Yet that is just what the United States Senate is proposing to do,
after the House already passed it.

After fighting and winning a war at long odds against the greatest
empire on earth, at the demand of the people, the Founders of U.S.
added a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, the fourth of ten of which is:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not
be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

—Fourth Amendment, U.S. Constitution, effective 15 Dec 1791

That is what the Congress proposes to give away next week,
by saying telcos like AT&T and Verizon can spy on you as long
as they have a note from the president saying it’s OK.

The Internet provides us tools to bring the Senators to their senses.

To quote a fighter against that same world-spanning empire, Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Continue reading →

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday announced plans to cut 250 positions
across the company, including 150 positions in editorial, in a new
effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further
cost-cutting step, the newspaper will reduce the number of pages it
publishes each week by 15%.

“You all know the paradox we find ourselves in,” Times Editor Russ Stanton
said in a memo to the staff. “Thanks to the Internet, we have more
readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But
also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we
have less money.”

One reason for these cuts is the housing downturn in California:
fewer real estate ads.
But there are deeper reasons:

Announcements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week
by dailies in Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere. Among Tribune
newspapers, the Baltimore Sun said it would cut about 100 positions
by early August and the Hartford Courant announced plans to cut about
50 newsroom positions. The New York Times and the Washington Post both
instituted layoffs or buyouts to reduce their staffs this year.

Besides the changes in the newspaper industry, Tribune carries the burden
of about $1 billion in annual payments on its debt, much of which it
took on to finance the $8.2-billion buyout.

Sure, it’s happening everywhere.
But the L.A. Times is one of the best sources of journalism around.
Why did somebody find it worthwhile to buy it out just to load it
up with debt and force layoffs?

Whether this newspaper was targetted or not, the handwriting is on the
wall for fishwraps.
They’ll either adapt to the Internet or die.
I suspect many of them will die.
That means we’ll lose many of our traditional sources of real reporting.
Fortunately, some new sources are arising,
such as Talking Points Memo,
which bit into the Justice Department scandals and hung on like a bulldog.
Yet blogs like that thus far have a tiny fraction of the resources of
big newspapers like the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
There’s going to be a time of unsettlement of the fishwrap plains
while the new shops in cyberspace put down roots into the old country.

And we won’t have ready access to either the remaining existing newspapers
worldwide or to the new online sources of reporting unless we have a
free Internet.
Yet another reason that net neutrality is important.

I’ve been waiting for this to hit the bigtime, and it has, it’s been slashdotted:

ya really notes a blog posting up at Wired reporting that foes of the Telecom Amnesty Bill have mounted a campaign on
Barack Obama’s own website. Though the group was created only days ago, on June 25, it has grown to be the fifth largest among 7,000 such groups, just short of Women for Obama. Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again.

This group is a goldmine of information about which telecoms gave
what money to whom.

The most significant part to me is that people are using a candidate’s
own organizing tools to attempt to organize the candidate.
Not stopping there, either, attempting to organize allies for the candidate.
Obama claims to be people-powered.
Let him say that while other politicians follow money from lobbyists,
he listens to the people who give him money, who are the people,
and when they said think again he did, and discovered the bogus
House FISA “compromise” bill is no such thing, and now he’s against it.
We’ll see.